With the hype around the upcoming 5G cellular technology growing every day, Nokia says it's often forgotten that optical transport networks able to deliver sufficient bandwidth, flexibly and with minimal latency will be essential to 5G’s success.

A cellular base station with 128 antennas may soon help some mobile operators serve many more subscribers in crowded areas. Nokia demonstrated the technology, called massive MIMO (multiple in, multiple out) with Sprint at Mobile World Congress on Monday.

Classic phone brands from yesteryear are coming alive in Barcelona. Nokia, Blackberry and Moto were among the unlikely headline makers ahead of the Mobile World Congress trade show, which starts on Monday.

The Federal Communications Commission announced Wednesday that it had approved two cellular base stations – one each from Ericsson and Nokia – to use LTE-U, marking the first official government thumbs-up for the controversial technology.

Vodafone Hutchison Australia (VHA) and Nokia staged their first trial of 5G mobile technology in Australia at the University of Technology, Sydney, where Vodafone is supporting researchers working on 5G technologies.

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